


Home is Together

by Jerevinan



Series: Wandering Dads [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Raising a family, Romance, parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:06:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25764127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jerevinan/pseuds/Jerevinan
Summary: Ignis and Noctis continue to tackle the trials of parenthood and all that comes with it. They always have each other (and their children), and love and happiness is always right there.A series of oneshots continuing from my fic, Wandering Souls.
Relationships: Noctis Lucis Caelum/Ignis Scientia
Series: Wandering Dads [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1869028
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	Home is Together

**Author's Note:**

> My brain has mostly been fixated on other stories and fandoms, and apparently when I want to write this ship again, I can't _possibly_ finish my incomplete fics! No, it has to be a brand new one.
> 
> These are all out of chronological order. Each chapter is a oneshot that can stand alone, but it's all part of the same AU, so I didn't want to have a clutter of them everywhere (or come up with multiple fic titles, let's be honest). 
> 
> You'll need to read Wandering Souls to understand most if not all the oneshots. This gets fluffy and cheesy at times, you have been warned.

Noctis will _not_ go into his son’s room. Not for dirty laundry, not to vacuum the crumbs off his floor—hah, who is he kidding, Noctis hates vacuuming—and definitely not to wake up his kid every morning. 

His teenager could have picked any sort of slovenly habits to keep him out. Maybe even a “keep out” sign on the damn door.

But no, his fourteen-year-old decided the best way to keep his father from coming in was to fill the room with _bugs._

This may not have been Victor’s intention, but it works well if the teenager ever wants to keep his father from entering his bedroom.

Noctis tried to ban insect-keeping. He’s had practice refusing all sorts of pets, but he lost the excuse that the RV was too small when they moved into the lighthouse, and he caved with the cat Victor found because she’s super adorable, and… Well, now he can’t use the “you don’t know what they eat or how to care for it” excuse, because his son now counters with his research on how to care for each and every awful creepy crawly. 

Noctis eventually said, “I hate bugs.”

And Victor, being that age where kids are especially testing their limits, replied, “There are bugs all over the house, and you can’t keep them all out. I saw a spider in Marta’s room last night. A little one, Dad, stop making that face! It won’t _kill_ her.”

Noctis eventually caved. There are a few rules, and according to Ignis—who can handle Victor’s new menagerie—none of them have been broken in the three months since they started allowing the icky creatures into the house. Victor must research how to care for each and every one of them properly. No keeping anything that is medically significant to anyone in the house, including the cat. Victor’s collection is limited to a handful of terrariums that sit on one table in his room. Nothing can exceed that.

Victor has mostly raised caterpillars that sneak in on fruits and vegetables from the garden or the marketplace. Once they’re butterflies—or moths—he releases them outside. An entire case is dedicated to breeding ladybugs, which Victor puts aphid-infested houseplants into and waits until there are enough to unleash some on the outside gardens. Ignis finds it handy for the vegetable patch.

It gets even worse. Victor doesn’t keep most of them, but if anyone spots a bug in the house, he captures it temporarily so he can identify it before re-release. (And it’s always a release; Noctis can’t convince him to murder even the most evil-looking spiders.) If Victor finds a dead one, he’ll put it on a napkin and take it up to his room and dissect it. There’s a strict rule that all body parts must be disposed of afterward. Noctis wishes the same rule could apply to the cat, who loves to hunt insects but never eats them. Sometimes she even thinks it’s some kind of gift to drop live cicadas down on Noctis’ foot.

He still has nightmares about that. The only benefit to having a son who loves insects is that Noctis knows exactly whose name to call for when he needs “rescued” from these horrible creatures.

But now he has a dilemma. Ignis is helping his uncle with post-operation recovery for a week until another family member can take over, and Noctis is alone in the house with his children, their cat, and an undetermined amount of creepy crawlies. Some of them uncaged and hiding in cupboards, but most of them on the other side of his son’s bedroom door.

Victor usually sleeps in on weekends, and Noctis lets him. After a lifetime of undiagnosed chronic fatigue syndrome, Noctis isn’t about to get on his son’s case for sleeping until one in the afternoon. Teenagers need more sleep, there are studies about it! (If only those studies had been conducted a generation beforehand; Noctis could have really used them on his side, along with his diagnosis.)

But Noctis needs Victor up when he sleeps well into the evening. There is fresh pizza for dinner. His son was up long enough to grab a glass of milk and a piece of toast, sleepily text a friend, and tend to the vegetable garden during the mid-afternoon. After a shower, however, he slinked back to bed.

Noctis tries to knock on the door first, but it doesn’t work. He texts, he calls, he pleads in a loud voice. Everything short of banging or yelling, because either of those things would startle the household, and Noctis never appreciated some of the ways his friends woke him up in his teens that involved loud noises or banging. This is a peaceful, quiet home, damnit, and Noctis isn’t about to change that over nasty little bugs that are plotting his demise.

Noctis tries one last thing. 

“Marta, can you wake Victor up for me?”

The three-year-old eyes him squarely before picking up her pizza—which she has barely touched, only picking off some cheese and all the pepperoni from the top—and taking a firm bite from the crust.

“Please?”

“No.” She wiggles a little in her seat and seems pleased with her answer.

“He wants pizza, too.”

“Daddy wakes Vicky.” She takes another bite, as if that settles the matter. 

Defeated by a three-year-old, a teenager, and the teenager’s army of bugs. At one point, Noctis traveled in an RV with an energetic toddler who burst into tantrums at random from wanting his mommy and not being able to comprehend why she wasn’t coming. If he could survive that, he could handle some caged insects and spiders.

Noctis makes Marta come with him, pizza in hand, and ignores that she drips sauce onto the sleeve of his shirt and manages to transfer a bunch of it from her cheek to his when he lifts her into his arms. She nibbles quietly on the crust and doesn’t make any remark or protest as he brings her up the stairs and to Victor’s room.

Noctis tries the door-knocking thing one more time. Nothing. Okay, he can do this. He can enter this room. The window is on the other side, about fourteen feet away, and that’s where the bug table is located. 

Noctis swings open the door and flips on the light. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the mass on the bed stir, but his gaze is directly fixed on the tanks across the way. He doesn’t see most of the bugs. The leaves from all the plants inside the terrariums obscure most of them. The most obvious terrarium is the one with ladybugs, and those aren’t nearly so bad. Noctis doesn’t want them to touch him, but he can stand to look at them from a distance.

Marta pushes her knees against Noctis’ ribcage to signify she wants down. He sets her on the ground, and she immediately hurries over to her brother’s bed and plops into it, still munching on the very end of her crust. 

“VIC-TOR!” She pats the lump under the sheet with the same fervor a drummer taps their instrument. 

“I thought you weren’t helping,” says Noctis.

She stops long enough to grin at her father before setting back to work with drumming her brother’s thigh to wake him up. It doesn’t take long for Victor to stretch out and plead that he’s awake, and when she responds by patting him again, he flips the sheet over her head.

“Victor!” 

“Mar-ta!” He tries to imitate her voice and fails when his cracks. “Ugh, Dad, why’d you let her in here?” As he says this, he rises up, scoops the still-covered child into his arms, and begins tickling her. The screeches are a bit much for Noctis’ ears, but he simply scoots out of the room and waits for the pair to stop playing around. 

Victor finally emerges from his bed, his sister now a mess of pizza sauce and frizzy hair but safely in his arms.

“Got Vicky up,” she says proudly.

“You told me that was my job.”

“Good thing Marta’s around to pick up your slack,” says Victor, and when Noctis gives him a _look_ , he cringes. “It’s the insects again, isn’t it? Dad, if you really don’t want them in the house, I can—” 

“Nah, I agreed to it.”

“Yeah, when I wouldn’t stop begging you.” 

Noctis sighs. “Close the door, would you? I don’t want to look at them.”

“I know.” Victor shifts his sister in his arms to free a hand and latch the door shut. He follows behind Noctis closely down the stairs, all the way back to the dining room. “Dad, I have an idea. Oh, pizza!” 

Victor sets his sister back in front of her plate and fetches a fresh one for himself before diving in with all the usual enthusiasm any growing person living their entire day off one slice of toast might. Noctis joins in, grabbing two slices of pepperoni and opening a can of cola.

After the family has all had a few bites to eat and some sips of something to drink, Noctis pursues further details on something Victor mentioned.

“You said you had an idea?”

Victor, midway through a drink of soda, holds up a finger. He nods as he finishes swallowing. “Yeah, yeah. Um, Dad? What if we made a shed outside for them? Or fix up that back porch? I can keep the bugs, but you don’t have to deal with them. Just gotta figure out a way to maintain the temperature.” 

Noctis considers this suggestion, but he likes the shed idea more than the one about the porch. The latter is still attached to the house, which means that while Noctis might not go back there, any “breakouts” might still affect him. A shed means distance, but they would have to build one, and it would require electricity somehow. None of that is cheap.

“I’ll talk to Papa,” says Noctis. “Gives me time to think about it. That okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” Victor nods.

“Thanks for thinking of me.” Noctis reaches over and ruffles his son’s hair for a couple of seconds before Victor—smirking—dodges out of the way. “When you were little, you wanted to protect me from insects.”

“A butterfly can’t hurt you.”

“It has creepy legs.”

“That pose no threat, Dad.” Victor raises an eyebrow at him, in a “I expected you to know better” way. It’s a look that clearly was inherited from or taught by the master of said expression: Clarus.

Noctis huffs. “Eat your pizza.”

Victor lets out a short laugh and scoops another slice out of the box. 

~*~

Ignis arrives two days later, sometime in the late afternoon. It hasn’t been as difficult to navigate around Victor’s room since the conversation they had over pizza, but Noctis is eager—maybe more than Victor—to find a solution for their budding entomologist. After Ignis unpacks and takes a shower, the two watch over Marta in the tiny living room, which apparently is a playroom as well, given the amount of toys in the room.

“You seem excited,” says Ignis. “Did something happen while I was gone?”

The conversation was too big for a phone call or to type in a text, and Noctis decided it best to wait until they were all together.

“Once Victor gets back in, we’ll fill you in,” he promises. His son has taken over gardening duties for Ignis the past week. The pair usually share the yard chores together, weeding and harvesting while they chat.

It doesn’t take long for Victor to enter the house. The screen on the backdoor slams closed, and there’s shuffling in the laundry room as he does his usual routine of kicking off his muddy boots. Victor emerges in the kitchen and pokes his head through the doorway. He doesn’t walk on the carpet and stays on the tiles in the kitchen. His next stop is usually the main floor bathroom, where he’s got fresh clothes ready for after his shower. Sweat beads down his tanned face and dampens the front of his shirt.

“Hey, Papa, welcome home,” he says, waving. “Got some tomatoes.” He holds up a basket in his arms. “The zucchini exploded, too.”

Noctis makes a face at the idea that there will be more vegetables accompanying their meals. They have all sorts of plants around the house, inside and out. Marta likes to help water the ones in the house, held up by one of her daddies while she uses her miniature watering can to sprinkle the herbs and spices lined up along the windowsills. Noctis is slowly being buried in vegetables and bugs, two things he hates.

“Victor, when you’re done showering, will you join us?” asks Ignis. “It seems there’s some discussion Dad wants to have with me.”

Victor’s eyes light up. “Sure.”

The shower is quicker than usual, with Victor in fresh clothes and a towel around his shoulders within fifteen minutes. He sits across from his parents, tinkering with some kind of puzzle toy. 

“I had an idea about what to do with my bugs,” says Victor carefully. “Dad says he wanted to talk to you about it first.”

Victor pitches the suggestion again and Noctis weighs in with the pros and cons of each new location. 

“If it’s the shed, he can expand his collection,” finishes Noctis. “We could take him to the nearest scrapyard and see what pieces they’ve got?”

“Cid might have parts around, if you don’t mind a trip to Hammerhead,” says Ignis. “I think we can manage, if we salvage enough wood and windows. I think we still have some of the old wood from the restorations in the basement below the lighthouse? Mostly old windows and doors. Perfect for an insect shed.”

A lot of crap is stored down there, but Noctis forgets the place exists. He seldom goes below the lighthouse. It’s still their duty to light the lanterns every night, unless they’re taking one of their out-of-town trips, and then someone else takes over for them while they’re gone. It’s a sort of public service they took on when buying the property. 

“Someone is fixing up another one of the old houses in town,” says Victor, leaning forward in his seat and twisting the panels on the puzzle. “Think they might let us have stuff they’re just gonna throw out? I have some money…”

“We’ll see what happens,” says Ignis. “You need to sketch out a plan. How big will this shed be? What kind of door? What will be your lighting situation? What about the electrical and plumbing? You’ll need to hook up lights and have a sink for cleaning terrariums and providing fresh water.”

“Right. Wow, this is a lot of work, huh?”

“Worth it, if it gets the bugs out of the house,” says Noctis, leaning back in his chair with his arms tucked behind his head. 

“Does this mean I can keep stuff like spiders now?” asks Victor. “New place, new rules.”

Noctis and Ignis exchange glances. The rules were meant to protect Victor as much as Marta and the cat, but not every spider is medically significant even if they’re all various levels of venomous. 

And a shed full of insects is going to attract spiders no matter what, even the dangerous kinds. 

“Maybe…” says Noctis after a while. “We’ll have to discuss it on a case-by-case basis. Maybe some jumping spiders.”

“Why? I’d let those roam free. I want a widow.”

“No.” Ignis and Noctis both say is quickly and firmly, enough that even Marta stops playing and looks up.

“No widows,” says Noctis. “Absolutely not.”

“Pet tarantula?” Victor ventures.

“Is it local to the area?” asks Ignis, knowing the answer.

“Does everything have to be?” asks Victor in exasperation. 

“Yes?” Noctis curls up his nose and makes a hand gesture as if shooing away tarantulas in midair. “What if it gets lose? What if it bites you? What if it throws its hairs at you?”

“Why do you think tarantulas are out to hurt me?”

“They’re giant spiders, maybe that’s why?”

“Dad, some are docile.”

“Even docile ones, when aggravated, can hurt you,” says Ignis. “What if it gets lose and encounters a child or someone’s pet? It could harm local bird and insect populations. If there is ever more than one incident, it might breed and pose an even larger threat to the ecosystem. That’s why it has to be local.”

Victor hesitates. “Right. Okay. No tarantulas.” 

“You could paint the inside of your shed with any kind of bugs you want on the walls?” suggests Noctis. “Maybe put up spider models, too. It’ll be your space.”

That brightens Victor up. “Really? Anything I want? No dads allowed?”

“Papa’s allowed,” says Noctis quickly. “Not that you need supervision, it’s just…”

“I was joking, Dad.”

“Oh.” Noctis feels old for not picking up on his son’s obvious teasing. “Does it feel good to pick on me?”

“Yes.”

Noctis wags a playful finger at his son, but finds it a nice treat and great comfort when Ignis pulls him to his side for a hug. He leans into it. 

“Okay, kiddo, you can have the shed,” says Noctis. “We’ll help you out. It might take some time, and the rules we set in place still apply for now. We’ll re-evaluate them when the shed’s finished, but you’ll probably be able to keep more evil creatures in there than you can in the house. We’ll have to find a place for it, too. I think I know where. Near the garden, by the firewood?”

“That’s a good spot,” agrees Ignis, his hand absentmindedly caressing Noctis’s bicep. “Plenty of room, and you’ll have a lot of places to find bugs right there.” 

Victor grins. “Perfect.”

Noctis is satisfied with their solution, but he’s a little sad about one thing: the time it will take to build everything and get those icky bugs out of his house.


End file.
